A real-life soapie tale

Page Tools

As the fuddy-duddy patriarch of Neighbours, actor
Ian Smith has one of the most recognisable and best-loved faces on
Australian television.

Over nearly 20 years, millions have watched Harold Bishop's life
unfold in all its sudsy drama: the marriage to and death of his
beloved Madge Ramsey, countless displays of heroics, a stockmarket
loss and a lottery win, the shooting death of his daughter and,
that chestnut of soap opera storylines, his loss at sea and
subsequent reappearance, years later, suffering from amnesia.

But Smith's off-screen tale would confound even the most
experienced Neighbours script writer.

"Some of the things that have happened you wouldn't put in a
soap opera," Smith says. "Drama is bigger than life, but sometimes
life is bigger than drama."

The story will be told on Monday by the ABC's insightful
documentary series Australian Story when, for the first
time, Smith details the events of 12 years ago when his mother
Connie Smith, believing herself close to death, told him he was
adopted. The revelation triggered events and emotions that the
actor struggles with to this day.

The story focuses on Smith, his resolutely upbeat birth mother,
Peg Kline, Smith's wife, Gail, and Kline's sons and grandsons.
Smith's cast mate and close friend, Jackie Woodburne, also is
interviewed.

For Australian Story, the tale began in November after
Smith, 65, made a snap decision, while being interviewed on
commercial radio, to reveal the secret he'd held close for 11 years
and spoil the plans of a magazine to splash it.

"I thought, 'Well if I mention it here it will be out in the
public'," he says. "I don't know why. I just had to get rid of it,
to get it off my shoulders I think."

Australian Story's associate producer, Mara Blazic, was
listening.

Within hours Smith's agent had contacted him to discuss the
program's interest. Blazic and producer Belinda Hawkin set up a
meeting, to which Smith brought key members of his family.

"We needed to get a feel for whether or not Peg and Ian would
have the kind of faces and voices and emotional range, brutally
put, that would let people step inside their shoes in the unfolding
of the story and understand what it was to live their experience,"
says Hawkin.

"Not everybody has the capacity to do it. You don't have to be a
world leader or a world class actor, like Ian, to do it. You can be
an 80-year-old woman who hasn't been on camera before."

Smith agreed to participate, a decision spurred by the strength
he gained personally when actor Garry McDonald spoke out about his
breakdown and fight with depression.

Smith also has battled "the black dog", including two years in
which he barely left the house. "(Garry McDonald) helped me
enormously because it's a very lonely thing, these anxiety attacks,
and I thought, 'oh good, I'm part of a crowd'."

He hopes telling the story of his adoption may help others in
the way it seems to have helped when he has spoken of it in
private.

Despite his reconciliation with Kline, Smith's story contains
tragedy, irony and loss. Kline is just 14 years older than her
eldest son, having fallen pregnant after being assaulted by a
trusted family friend. And while finding his natural family and
revelling in a new sense of belonging, he punishes himself for the
blame he laid on his adopted mother, and comments he made to her
before she died. He believes she abandoned him after breaking her
long-held silence. Sometimes he wonders if telling him was
wise.

But there are light moments too. When Kline met her famous son
she had no idea who he was. She watched little television, had
never seen Neighbours and although she had watched Bellbird, could
not remember his character.

Says Smith: "The woman across the road came across the day I met
her, after I left, and she said, 'Do you know who he is?' Peg said,
I'm just finding out!"

The elements a producer looks for in a great Australian
Story are the elements also found in a great fictional script,
says Blazic.

"The gobsmacking 'what happened', and 'what happens next'. And
great characters... As soon as we walked into the room I thought,
'These are great characters'. Peg is like a great lead character.
That's when I thought that this is going to work. It's got all the
elements that you want in a great story."

And of course the story had happened to Smith, an icon of
Australian television.

"It's that thing of truth being stranger than fiction. Of all
the things that Harold may have gone through in the last 17 or 18
years, Ian's real life is more remarkable."

According to Hawkin, the story achieved what it set out to do.
Smith's family members tell their story with candour and,
sometimes, painful honesty.

"Anyone feels what it must be to be Peg and what it must be to
be Ian. And more than that, what it must be to be Ian's wife, Gail,
and what it must be to be Peg's children and grandchildren," she
says. "We all question our sense of identity at some point in our
lives and this story goes to the heart of how do you know who you
are and what it is to be you."

"I'm not worried in any way," Smith says of the revelations. "I
have surprised myself in some of the things I have said but it
doesn't matter because I'm not ashamed of any of it."

In some ways it had saved him sessions with a psychiatrist, he
says, not quite in jest. There is still a burden but it's lighter
now.

Peg, too, has benefited, and relishes her moment in the sun.

But it hasn't been easy for Gail, Smith's wife of 36 years.
While standing by her man through his poverty as a struggling
actor, his rise to international stardom and years of debilitating
depression, she stayed resolutely out of the limelight. The media
had never before breached the walls of their home.

"She deserves a medal," Smith says of his wife. "But even if you
spend your life in front of the camera ... it's totally different
when you are left to your own resources and you are talking about
something that is deep inside."

Former Neighbours co-star Delta Goodrem will present
Ian Smith's Australian Story on Monday at 8pm on the
ABC.